House of the Week: Queen Anne Victorian in Albany

According to About.com, the Queen Anne Victorian is the most fanciful of the Victorians styles, typically replete with spindles, a steep roof, decorative shingles and turrets. Throughout the 1880s as the style flourished in the U.S., the designs became more complicated as American builders expanded on a design originally created by England’s Richard Normal Shaw in the early 18th century, according to an essay on the subject on OldHouseOnline.

Although a somewhat restrained and later version of a Queen Anne, many of the hallmarks are there in this House of the Week: a mix of exterior finishes, a porch that wraps around two sides, spindles, stained glass and eyebrow windows. The interior has been renovated to add a custom kitchen, a spa bathroom and new insulation to improve the energy efficiency of the house.

Located at 89 Woodlawn Ave. in Albany’s Pine Hills neighborhood, the home has had only four owners in its 122 year history. It is 2,788 square feet with three bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms. There is a fireplace and nine rooms total. Parking is available in a detached barn behind the house. Once priced at $325,000, the house is now listed at $299,000. Taxes are approximately $7,200. See the listing here.More pictureshere.

Leigh Hornbeck

24 Responses

Love this house! Attention to detail: kitchen and bath cabinetry, color, woodwork, stained glass window, exterior color and details, and more. Homeowner’s furniture shows the interiors well in the photos. I like the restraint too, it’s not over-the-top frou frou Victorian. The yard is lovely. I can see myself in this home, if I chose to live in the city. Great house for entertaining too – lots of room inside and out. I’m not familiar with the neighborhood, but it looks like similar homes nearby. Lucky folks who get this one.

Sue – This seems like a fair price given what other houses in the neighborhood go for. This is a very popular part of Albany for home buyers. It’s price is slightly higher, but the house is also bigger than many other houses that have sold in that neighborhood and it is in excellent shape.

#5, I think that’s just a dummy door, so it blends with the rest of the cabinetry, my guess. Or, it can be accessed from the adjacent cabinet?
#8, I’m not opposed to leaving it where it is, but I’d rather just dig it up and move it to the back – that’s a beautiful tree and would cost a fortune to buy it at a nursery at that size.

There is something odd about the kitchen and bathroom cabinetry. It looks as though it was recycled and overly refinished or a lesser quality, homemade(?) installation. #5’s observation about the tub being installed w/ seemingly no regard for the cabinetry brought my attention to it. Regardless, first thing I’d do – get rid of the electrified clock/radio sitting on the ledge above the tub.

Great house. Love the details, yard, front porch and all the updating. Lots of space too. Biggest downside is location. Nice area, but not $300k nice. You can live on Euclid or Lennox for that money and not have to deal with renters.

Grand old house! Appears to be turn key quality. Some repainting would be needed, but who cares? That is typical in most pre-owned homes regardless of age. This kind of house sells itself. Immaculate yard with clean slate. Garage needs some buckets of paint, otherwise a great listing.

Really nice. Does anyone know what the cutout in the ledge of the stained glass window was for? The only thing I didn’t like was the claustrophobic toilet area, I don’t like kissing the lid when cleaning.

The home has potential and some lovely aspects! It was unusual to see the same cupboards for the kitchen and bathroom. The price of the home needs to reflect the benefits of the culture of the immediate area.

I have loved this house forever. It is a grand Victorian, but unfortunately it’s not in an area of similar and similarly maintained homes and not worth this price. True, there are a few fine old homes down the block and around the corner on S Lake that sell at relatively high prices, but S Lake is an entirely different creature than these blocks on Woodlawn. And, similar houses in better areas are not fetching this kind of price. Our neighbors, for example, just sold their 5-BR, 2.5B 2,500 sf Victorian beauty for $240K.

Way overpriced for the street. Drive a block farther down Woodlawn toward Ontario and it’s all run-down multi-families that are non-owner occupied and derelict. It’s a nice house but quirky…weird fireplace crammed into the corner of the dining room, over-done kitchen cabinetry, the barn/garage that looks like it’s seen better days. Somebody said for the money you could go to Euclid or Manning or any of Albany’s nicer neighborhoods. That’s absolutely true. Unless they drop the price substantially, this place will be on the market a very long time.

I’m shocked at all the comments saying that the price is too high. It’s not. This house is the dream scenario: grand old house with lots of character, tastefully restored with lots of new parts (based on the photos). I restore old houses and used to work in real estate and I can tell you that if you want a gem like this you will have to pay extra. If you want a similar house that maybe has one new bathroom or the owner painted the old kitchen cabinets then maybe you can buy that for 240K. Do you really want to spend the next 15 years spending 5 or 10 grand a year redoing various rooms, buying all your uninteresting lighting and appliances from Home Depot or Lowe’s (so that your house looks like every other house in Albany) or do you want to just enjoy a house that looks basically new and has lots of interesting details? If you want the latter, it will cost you extra. Don’t listen to the real estate agents who say this is overpriced, the neighborhood isn’t as nice as S Lake, etc and warn against paying the asking price. With older, restored homes it’s difficult to find what the real estate business calls “comps”. Other similar homes. So when the real estate agent says “oh, that same size house sold down the street for 220K”, your next question should be “was it restored to look like this house”? Doubtful. If you’re in love with a house and it’s the house you want and you’re going to live there 20 years then paying a little extra isn’t a bad thing.

p.s. Always, always, always have a reputable home inspector go through any house you’re thinking of buying. Don’t be an idiot and skip this step just because the house looks good.

Nice old house, though as pointed out the Bathroom tub and cabinet situation is sort of crammed..My next concern would be how much money I will need to repaint all the Walls someone’s been watching that H&G TV show again which gives such horrible advice just to push their Advertisers products and then the show following it tells you have renovate the house the previous show ruined.. On my last house it cost nearly $8000. to bring the walls back to a neutral. Having grown up in that area I have a couple of concerns, no pictures of the basement for one, also that countertop in the kitchen with with wood molding looks homemade and not right, maybe it is just the picture. My parents sold their home a couple of blocks away from this one for $63,000. some years ago, so I do not see how these homes appreciated nearly four – five times that value with no real renovations other than a fancied up bathroom in that time.